Category Archives: Adaptive Reuse of Churches

The Story of the Spires – Scranton

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Walking toward the spires in Scranton, PA, I started and ended in Downtown and explored a portion of the Medical and University neighborhoods. Like Pittsburgh and Buffalo, the few religious buildings I found in the heart of downtown remained active. In the adjoining neighborhoods, I found several active religious buildings and others that had been converted to new uses.

Of the 10 total buildings built for religion that I encountered, six remained active while four had been converted to secular uses. One former synagogue is now used for housing. Two former churches are now university buildings. One former church is now a children’s library. This sampling seemed representative enough to contribute to my observations on trends in adaptive reuse and population change. Scranton has experienced a 47% drop in population since its peak population in the 1930s. Based on this information, I expected to find several vacant and reused religious buildings. The surprise finding was that none of them appeared vacant when I got out on the ground.

I also noticed several religious buildings as I drove through the southern neighborhoods on my way home. Because I was driving, I didn’t have the ability to stop and take notes or photos of these buildings, but those that I noticed appeared to be either active religious buildings or active in a secular reuse.

The lack of vacant buildings may perhaps be explained by the recent population trends. While overall, the population is significantly down from the peak, in the last couple decades the decline in population has slowed and the 2020 census showed a miniscule increase in population. It is, so far, the only one of my comparison cities that had a major population drop and a recent increase in population. While Bethlehem and Stroudsburg also saw population increases in the 2020 census, they did not have the same steep drop since the peak population that Scranton and most of the other cities in this survey did.

CityPopulation Loss Since Peak (Peak Year)Population Change in 2020Status of Religious Buildings
Bethlehem1% (1960)0.86%Primarily active sacred uses
Erie26% (1960)-6.82%Primarily active sacred uses
Homestead85% (1920)-9.04%Significant numbers closed or converted to secular uses
Pittsburgh55% (1950)-0.96%Significant numbers closed or converted to secular uses
Scranton47% (1930)0.30%Significant numbers converted to secular uses
Stroudsburg14% (1950)6.47%Primarily active sacred uses
Wilkinsburg49% (1950)-10%Significant numbers closed or converted to secular uses

In addition to the religious and former religious buildings, I found 2 civic buildings and 1 school that sported spires.

The Story of the Spires – Buffalo

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When I visit a town, I have a habit of searching out the bridges and the spires to get a feel for the place. Buffalo is one of the most recent places where I applied this approach. Given the size of Buffalo (52 square miles with a population over 275,000), I wasn’t able to explore enough of the city on this trip to add to observations of population trends and adaptive reuse of the religious buildings. So instead, I focused on the spires I could see in downtown. Comparing this to Pittsburgh, where the downtown also has several spires and where I have done a pretty thorough survey of the entire city, I realized that neither Pittsburgh’s nor Buffalo’s downtowns would be indicative of the city-wide trends of adaptive reuse of sacred buildings. The development pressures of a downtown are significantly different from the outlying neighborhoods. In both cities, the religious buildings that survived the development pressures of a downtown have remained in active use.

What struck me while walking toward the spires in downtown Buffalo was how I typically eliminate or discount spires for secular buildings that I find while on these searches. In Buffalo, I felt that if I’m calling my approach “the story of the spires” leaving out the secular spires leaves out a part of the story.1 The secular spires that caught my eye were for buildings across a spectrum of uses. The Erie County building (1872); a former US Post Office (1901), now a part of SUNY Buffalo’s campus; and the former headquarters of the Buffalo General Electric Company (1912), now an office building, were the three secular spires that caught my eye. These three buildings underscore the larger trend in monumental architecture passing from religious to government to corporate buildings.

Below, I share photos of both the sacred and the secular spires that I found in downtown Buffalo.

Sacred Spires

Secular Spires

  1. For those of you who are word nerds, I double checked the definition of spire as I typically only use it when talking about religious buildings, so I wanted to make sure that the term applies to the same kind of structure whatever the building’s use is. In doing this, I got the confirmation I wanted, but also discovered that Merriam-Webster’s #1 definition for spire is: “a slender tapering blade or stalk (as of grass).” ↩︎

The Story of the Spires – Stroudsburg

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One of the key ingredients for the stability component of “home” is safety. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was a concern about the safety of living in cities and living in New York in particular. The Pennsylvania boroughs of Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg were among the places considered safe by those leaving New York City. Knowing this going in and comparing it to the lessons learned from Bethlehem, I assumed that the religious buildings would reflect a sense of stability.

Of the two boroughs, Stroudsburg has a more centralized concentration of religious buildings that was easy for me to explore on foot within the limitations of my post-injury recovery phase. The results of this survey confirmed my hypothesis. Of the seven buildings I found, only one was converted to a secular use. Another one appeared to be having a renovation of it’s primary entrance but was still looked actively used as a church. (Facebook confirmed that it is still active with a video of the Polish language mass from a few days before the date I looked it up.) A third building was a storefront that is a First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Comparing Stroudsburg with other Pennsylvania towns where I’ve explored the status of religious buildings, it fits the pattern well. Stroudsburg’s peak population was in 1950, the same as Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg. Below is an updated chart of the population loss for these cities and a broad impression of the state of their religious buildings.

CityPopulation Loss Since Peak (Peak Year)Status of Religious Buildings
Bethlehem1% (1960)Primarily active sacred uses
Erie26% (1960)Primarily active sacred uses
Homestead85% (1920)Significant numbers closed or converted to secular uses
Pittsburgh55% (1950)Significant numbers closed or converted to secular uses
Stroudsburg14% (1950)Primarily active sacred uses
Wilkinsburg49% (1950)Significant numbers closed or converted to secular uses

The Story of the Spires – Bethlehem

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While exploring Bethlehem’s bridges, my eye was caught by the numerous spires rising above the surrounding buildings of South Bethlehem. Instead of resting upon returning to the hotel, I felt compelled to go back out and take a survey of religious buildings within walking distance. Due to the topography, those on the slopes of South Bethlehem were the easiest to spot, but I also located some in Bethlehem’s historic district and in West Bethlehem. I found twenty-three buildings in all.

As with my experience in Erie, I was surprised that the vast majority of these buildings were still open for use as religious worship. Bethlehem Steel Company was the main employer in Bethlehem for most of the 20th Century. Like steel mills elsewhere in the northeast, its business declined. In the early 2000s, the company went bankrupt. This makes it seem like the town should have experienced the classic rise and decline of other Rust Belt Cities.

One of the typical landmarks of this change is an abundance of vacant or adaptively reused religious buildings. In Pittsburgh, I have found over 50 former churches and synagogues now being used for secular purposes or in the process of being converted to secular purposes. Many more are vacant and boarded. Wilkinsburg, a town adjacent to Pittsburgh, has so many closed churches that its zoning code incorporates guidelines for converting church buildings to secular uses. Homestead, PA, the former home to US Steel and the site of the famous Homestead Steel Strike, has several shuttered churches. Bethlehem’s religious buildings did not fit this pattern.

In searching for an answer to what made Bethlehem different than other steel towns, I realized that the business districts and residential areas I passed through were mostly intact. There were few vacant buildings and no vacant and abandoned grass lots. This suggested that Bethlehem did not experience the same decline as the other former steel towns that I have explored. The historical population data corroborated this hypothesis. Bethlehem and Erie experienced their peak populations in 1960; Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg in 1950; and Homestead in 1920. In 2010, the cumulative population loss from each city’s peak was:

CityPopulation Loss
Bethlehem1%
Erie26%
Pittsburgh55%
Wilkinsburg49%
Homestead85%

The stable population of Bethlehem explains why so many religious institutions are still operating. It doesn’t explain why the people stayed when the jobs left.

I picked up Jeffrey A Parks’s “Stronger than Steel: Forging a Rust Belt Renaissance” to look for clues to what made Bethlehem different from other Rust Belt cities. For the most part, it seems to have pursued the same actions and initiatives as elsewhere. Bethlehem’s leaders even hired consultants from Pittsburgh in the 1950s to learn how to do Urban Renewal. Other similarities include the creation of a redevelopment authority, the use of eminent domain to force people out of their homes for commercial development, the building of a highway through town, and the change of traffic patterns to prioritize the regional over the local.

The one thing mentioned in Parks’s book that was different from other cities was the school district. In the 1960s, the Bethlehem School District expanded to incorporate two rural townships. These townships later became wealthy suburbs that combined with the population of Bethlehem to create a racially and economically diverse district. Parks’s implication seemed to be that the result was a school district with better funding and resources than its neighbors. Perhaps, as a result, families did not have the conversation about moving to the suburbs for better schools as their children approached school age.

A decent inner-city school district may reduce the flight to the suburbs. It also may attract new residents. Yet, I wonder if it is enough to prevent hemorrhaging population loss as a region’s major employer cuts jobs in the decades before it closes.

Sacred Row

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This is a fascinating structure I discovered on the South Side Flats. A friend and I were going around the neighborhood looking at adaptively reused church buildings. While going from one building we knew of to another location, we stumbled upon this building. From what I’ve pulled together so far, this building was built sometime between 1876 and 1884 as four rowhouses. In 1926, the Second Greek Catholic St John the Baptist Church of the South Side purchased the property. The deed described the structure as four 4-room houses. When the Second Greek Catholic St John the Baptist Church sold the property in 1959, the deed described the property as four 2-story brick party wall houses.

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However, when you look at the side of the building facing 23rd St, it appears that at one time, this property was used as a church. The middle of the three boarded up openings on this side looks like it used to be a door for an entrance into a church that has been partially bricked up. From this I assume that while the Second Greek Catholic St John the Baptist Church owned the property, they renovated to use as their place of worship with a main front door and two windows.

I look forward to learning more about this structure and its history. I suspect there is an interesting story that connects this building to the 1st St John the Baptist Greek Church which is still in operation at the corner of E Carson St and 7th and the 2nd St John the Baptist Greek Church that set up just down the block at 615 E Carson St before moving to Jane St. From the pieces I’ve found so far there was a severe split in the South Side congregation that involved boycotts and arrests of arguing members and former members.  I’m not sure yet how this rowhouse/church may have fit into that struggle.

 

 

A Lofty Location

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St. John German Evangelical Lutheran Church

This little gem in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood is full of surprises.  In the 20-some years I’ve been passing through this area, I never noticed the building.  It was brought to my attention a few years ago when I began researching adapted church buildings in Pittsburgh.  If you are in the nearby vicinity, the building blends into its surroundings.  But from other parts of the city it stands out (see 31st Street Bridge, Bloomfield Bridge, Busway Bridges: Herron Street, Busway Bridges: 28th Street).  It is also visible standing out along the ridge in the second photo in my Washington’s Crossing Bridge post.

40th Street Rise

There are two characteristics that make it stand out from a distance.  The first is its location at the highest point on 40th Street in Lawrenceville.

St John's/Choir Loft Condominiums

The second characteristic is one of the most intriguing parts of this building: the fellowship hall is at ground level and the sanctuary is above, reached by a flight of stairs.  This is the only church building I have been in where the sanctuary is a full flight of stairs above ground level.  I’m very curious to know if there are any others–please share, if you’ve come across one!

St John's Evangelical Lutheran Church Choir Loft Condominiums

The building was built in 1896-97 for the German Evangelical Lutheran St. John’s Congregation, which later became St. John’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church.  In 2002, the congregation merged with St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church and closed the doors on this location.  A real estate agent purchased the property and prepped it for conversion into 3 condominiums–one unit each for the sanctuary, fellowship hall, and parish house–before the current owners purchased the property and completed most of the rehab work creating the Choir Loft Condominiums.  (A side note that may be of interest is that the current owners considered purchasing the building that is now the Union Project but chose this one instead.)

The owner reported that the building was essentially empty for nearly 2 years before he acquired it.  The floors were in bad condition–the pews had been ripped out, tearing the sanctuary’s floor, and the choir loft’s floor was completely missing.  He said his goal in renovating the building was to “not destroy the architecture and the interior.  We wanted it to feel like a church still because it is a church.”

Having gotten a tour of the interior of the sanctuary unit, I’d say they succeeded in this goal.  The former sanctuary space is an open loft configuration with hardwood floors.  The raised steps for the altar area were kept and made into the kitchen.  The choir loft remained open and served as the bedroom.  The gorgeous stained glass windows were also intact.  While I was there on a winter evening after sunset, I loved the description of how the colored pattern from the stained glass gradually moves across the floor like a very colorful sundial.  My other favorite part was that there was still a bell in the tower, which the owner rang for me.  While inside the sound was muffled, it sounded like it could have woken sleeping neighbors.

The Union Project: Engaging Community

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The Union Project

Every adapted church building I’ve come across has something that makes it unique.  Of all the ones I’ve come across so far, the Union Project used the most creative method in restoring/adapting the building.

In the late 1990s, a small group of people came together and said that they wanted a “space for art and faith” in their neighborhood.  (The quotes in this post are from one of the founding members, who I interviewed for a school project.)  By 2001, this group and this sentiment had grown and they purchased the vacant, former Union Baptist Church at the intersection of Negley and Stanton Avenues, two major roads in the East End of Pittsburgh, to convert it into a community center.

When the community center acquired it, the church was still considered active, but it had not been used regularly for two to four years.  The building was in very poor condition: the roof leaked, there were broken windows, and pigeons and rodents lived inside.  It took four years to prepare the building for occupancy and an additional six years to completely restore the structure.

The part that I like the most about how this building was adapted, was the alternative method they came up with for restoring the stained glass windows of the structure.  All the windows needed restoration, which I’m sure would have added up to a colossal expense.  Instead of giving up or attempting to raise all the funds to pay for a professional restoration, they offered community classes in stained glass restoration using the church’s windows as the class materials.  Some of the windows needed to be completely reconstructed in which case the instructor, a stained glass professional, created the new windows.  Beside these, all the windows were restored by community members at the classes.

Stain Glass Restoration

Stain Glass Restoration

I took one of the classes a few summers ago.  It was a lot of fun and quite interesting to learn how stained glass windows are put together.  At least a couple of the people in my class were taking the course so they would be able to restore the stained glass windows in their homes.  Much of the housing stock in the neighborhoods surrounding the building feature at least one stained glass window, so this was a useful skill for the local homeowners to learn.  A 2012 article in the Post-Gazette announces the completion of this restoration project.

Over the years since the Union Project began, the building has slowly been restored one piece at a time.  The former classrooms behind the sanctuary were restored first and converted into office space.  Several of these offices are used for the administration of the Union Project, while the rest are rented out to other community groups including a church group.  The basement was converted into an art space.  This is where the stained glass restoration classes were held.  There is also a pottery studio which offers classes.  Hula-hooping classes are held in the atrium, or out on the lawn in nice weather.  The sanctuary is used as a rental hall for receptions, community events and the like.  The narthex is a little coffee shop.

Restored Sanctuary

By the summer 2012, the building finally looked like a completed project: the stained glass windows were restored, the sanctuary was finally completely repainted, and the black soot was cleaned off the stone façade.  Because of Pittsburgh’s past as a major industrial city, all stone façade buildings collected black soot–many of these buildings have been cleaned in the last ten to twenty years.  In cleaning the soot off the Union Project, the crenellations on top of the towers were left black, leaving a respectful reminder of the past, while the change from a black building to white brightened up this corner of the neighborhood.

This is a project that showed me, and the group who completed it, that “anything is possible.”

Church Brew Works

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Church Brew Works

January 8, 2013, has been declared by City Council as Church Brew Works Day in the city of Pittsburgh to recognize the work of the restaurant’s founder/president, head brewer, and staff.  Council’s proclamation highlights the success of this group in adapting a vacant church “into a premiere, nationally recognized craft brewery, neighborhood fixture, and regional asset.”

The Church Brew Works is probably the most infamous of Pittsburgh’s adaptively reused churches.  Its notoriety stems from the fact that the brew house is located in the former altar.  A friend of mine told me that this positioning bothers her and if she eats at the Church Brew Works, she has to sit with her back to the altar.  I have heard that other people consider it sacrilegious to have the brew house on the former altar area and that these people refuse to patronize the restaurant.

This building was formerly an Eastern European Catholic Church and was purchased in 1996 to be converted into a restaurant and brewery.  I interviewed the founder/president for a paper on adaptively reused church buildings in Pittsburgh.  He explained that the idea for the restaurant started in 1994.  The first building selected for the project was an old fire hall two blocks away from the church.  The church was chosen in the end because of the availability of parking and the “great architecture.”  It was also easily accessible by car, which he felt was important for the success of the restaurant as Pittsburgh “lacks good public transit.”  Five months after the purchase was completed, the restaurant opened.

The church had been empty for two years by the time it was purchased in 1996.  The school attached to the church had been closed for twenty-five years.  The president felt that this added to the decrease in the congregation.  The closing of the mills drove church members away to search for new jobs while the closing of the school drove them away to find a new school for their children.  As a result of these pressures, the congregation dropped from 2000 to 200 parishioners.  When acquired for the restaurant, the church was “worn out” from a lack of reinvestment over the years and there was additional damage as a result of being completely closed for two years.  While the initial renovations of the building were completed in five months, paving the parking lot and completing the patio took longer.  Fifteen years later, work is still being done because of the “age of the building.”

Church Brew Works Sign

Much of the original building was reused or adapted in the conversion from a church to a restaurant.  The history section of the restaurant’s website explains how the pews were reused as benches for the tables and the bricks from the confessional that was taken down were used to create the pillars for the restaurant’s sign outside.  The original floor and lanterns were restored.  The result is a beautiful and unique interior for this restaurant.  To see what the interior looks like, check out the website or stop by for a meal.  I’ve enjoyed the food the few times I’ve eaten here.

Adaptively Rebuilt Church

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The Spire House is perhaps my favorite of all the adaptively reused churches I found in London.  Originally built as Christ Church Lancaster Gate in the 1850s and 1860s, the building has since been adapted to housing.  As I walked around the building, I thought it might have been one of the ones damaged during the war, but according to a website about the building most of the structure was demolished in the 1970s because of decay and fungus.

The reason why I liked this building was that despite the fact that most of it was demolished, part of it was saved and the rebuilt structure recalls the former design.  I particularly liked the “flying buttresses.”

I agree that there are times when a building can no longer function well, in this case because of decay and fungus, but buildings tell a lot about a society and its history and when they are demolished something gets lost.  The Spire House found a compromise between these two and it tells a lot about the city.  From the way this building was designed, it is apparent that this society is moving forward and changing, but still respects its past and its religion.  There other signs of this throughout the city, such as the church tower in the middle of a road.

Adaptive Reuse of Churches: London

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When I started planning on going to London this year, my first idea was to go for a month or so to study the adaptive reuse of churches in that city.  I thought London would be a good place to see a wide variety of adaptions as the UK has been working with the problem of redundant churches for about a hundred years.  As I was pursuing this idea I found a book from 1977 which addresses this problem across Great Britain.  (I have not come across any book publications on the adaptive reuse of church buildings in the US.)  This book “Chapels and Churches: Who Cares?” includes a discussion of what had been done up until that point in time in the adaptive reuse of church buildings.  I compiled a list of 76 different uses that these buildings have been adapted to from the book.  In my observations in the Pittsburgh area, I have seen less than ten types of new use for church buildings with housing being the most common.

There was one factor about the church buildings in London that I found fascinating, perhaps in part because it is not a factor in Pittsburgh, or any US city for that matter.  Many churches sustained damage during WWII and The Blitz.  The churches damaged during the war were demolished, rebuilt, adaptively reused, or memorialized, resulting in some unique (at least to me) situations.

I ended up not going to London to complete a research project on the adaptive reuse of church buildings, but instead went to the city for a few days and explored as much of the city as I could in that time.  This included looking for a few of the adaptively reused churches I had learned about in my preliminary research.  In the process of looking for the ones I knew about and simply walking around the city, I found some other adaptively reused churches.